Cousins calls
for “£15 minimum and workers’ participation” - How? Take over
the 380 monopolies, Socialist plan only answer

The
capitalist economic crisis in Britain grows steadily worse. At the
insistence of the bankers and industrialists, Wilson was compelled to
drop the programme of reforms which Labour had promised at the last
two elections. Already unemployment is approaching nearly half a
million. This before the winter sets in, in which unemployment is
expected to rise steeply to three-quarters of a million or even a
million.

The shameless
and cynical “opposition” of the Tories in Parliament to the
compulsory application of the freeze is revolting in its demagogic
appeals for liberty and freedom, from coercion and compulsion by the
state. They support these measures in so far as they are Tory
policies directed against the working class. They are a continuation
of Tory policies when they were in power. What they are opposed to is
the breaking of the “sanctity of contracts.” They do not mind
freezing wages, they object like the Confederation of British
Industry to the merest suggestion of a limitation of the “freedom”
to raise prices, the “freedom” to increase profits, and the
“freedom” to pay lavish dividends. They are not even against
state intervention, only the limitation of the exploiting rights of
the capitalist class.

They
fear that under the protests of even the right-wing dominated TUC at
the growth of unemployment the government might be compelled under
pressure of the working class to take some real radical measures
against the property owning class.

The
working people are very patient with what they consider is “their
government”; based on the support of the unions and the
constituencies, the Labour Party represents the majority of the
working class. That is why Wilson, Callaghan and Brown succeeded in
gaining a narrow majority at the Labour Party conference.

But
“putting it over” on the working people can only last for a
limited time. The government and certain trade union leaders have
shamefully tried to split the lower paid workers, from the more
highly paid skilled workers. But already the promised “redeployment”
in the Midlands of the car workers has been shown to be a myth.
Capitalism does not work that way! Jobs are not hatched by wishes.

Meanwhile
while wages have been frozen, prices continue to rise, meaning a cut
in real wages which hits even harder the lower paid workers. And
still the capitalists are not satisfied. Having got Wilson to
capitulate to their pressure, they are turning on the “heat.”
They want the full effects of the crisis of their system to be borne
by the working and middle class, and the small business men.

Production
for profit

The
texts of any of the speeches of the Labour leaders in the “crisis”
years of 1958 and 1961 would make bitter reading to any Labour
worker. The measures of the Tories were furiously condemned and
denounced by Wilson and the other Labour leaders, as utterly useless
and harmful to the British economy, while constituting an attack on
the standards of living of the working class.

Yet
now they are in office, they have out-Toried the Tories. Their
measures are far more severe and drastic. The working people and the
trade unions… for the time being, have tolerated attacks on the
rights of the unions and their standards, because they hope the
government will act on their behalf, as soon as they possibly can.
But the attacks have been twice as severe as those of the Tories in
the previous crisis and the consequences will be even worse.

Even
this is not enough for the capitalists, they are demanding even
severer measures. The government have lavished gifts on the
employers, especially big business, in the way of tax remissions and
grants to persuade them to increase their investments in new
machinery and equipment. But the capitalists do not invest for the
sake of investment. The Financial Times
put it bluntly in its editorial of October 22nd,
as well as any Marxist could state the case, (they were speaking to
their own class, as the overwhelming majority of workers do not, of
course, read this paper). “lf the fall in investment is to be
arrested, more is therefore required from the government than the
bringing forward of payments of investment grants, essential though
it is.” Economic growth must be held back so…
“a greater share [of the nation’s total resources—EG] must go
into private sector investment.”…“It is all the more important
to convince industry [they mean the industrialists and bankers—EG]
that when the next upturn comes it will bring higher profits with it.
If this is not done, there is no reason to invest.”

That’s
it in a nutshell. Capitalists produce for profit and nothing else.
Ping pong balls or machine tools, whatever is more profitable they
will produce. Their calculations are determined by the market. Where
80 percent is privately owned and the most productive part of
industry at that, and only 20 percent is under the control of the
state, it is the needs of private “industry” i.e. the
capitalists, which dictate to any government. The capitalists in
their turn are at the mercy of the market, nationally and
internationally. The man in the grave at Highgate Cemetery, Marx, to
whom Wilson referred sneeringly at the Labour Party conference,
explained this more than a hundred years ago!

As
a result of the freeze measures, investment is falling twice as much
as in the crisis years of 1958 and 1961. Meanwhile of all the main
industrial countries Britain’s share of world markets is still
dropping. While world exports were increasing in the first half of
this year by 10 percent, that of the United States increased by 14
percent, Japan by 13 percent, Germany and France 12 percent and even
Italy 13 percent, that of Britain increased by
only 5.5 percent. Thus as Wilson so
eloquently declaimed in the past, the so-called “cure” of freeze
at the expense of the working people is worse than the disease!

The
cure of the capitalists is to try and force the Labour leaders to
abandon even the remnants of Labour’s election programme. When the
freeze was introduced, the government promised to maintain the
expenditure on the social services intact. This was not true even at
the time, as the actual expenditure of the government on housing,
hospitals and other social services is well behind the original
target. But now under pressure, having given his hand to the bosses,
they are now grabbing both arms. Wilson under pressure has announced
that investment comes first and the social services last. As the
Financial Times
speaking for the ruling class notes approvingly:

“The
Prime Minister himself has said that the economically essential must
now take precedence over the socially desirable. There is no better
way of demonstrating that he means what he says than by holding down
on all forms of non-productive government spending. It
is not the cutbacks which may or may not materialise next year which
matter most in this context but what happens after 1967.”

The
Economist, journal of
the most intelligent section of the ruling class, gloomily points
out, echoing Cousins, that it is the construction and engineering
industries which will be most hard hit and that as Cousins has
pointed out,

“Despite
all the talk of the great curative effects of a recession it
[productivity—EG] seems more likely to go down… The real tragedy
is that the downturn seems almost certain to be concentrated most
heavily on the investment that the country most needs. This is an
exercise in debilitation, not in economic reinstatement.”

So
much for the spurious optimism of Wilson and the Cabinet. They
thought they could “plan” capitalism. Capitalism is planning
them. The spokesmen of the ruling class show that the next 18 months
to two years will be the worst years for production since the war.
There may even be a drop in production rather than the dreams of
increasing production which the Labour leaders had before coming to
office.

These
are just figures to the capitalists and their hired tools in the
editorial and economists’ chairs, to the top ranks of the civil
servants, the judges and the Members of Parliament themselves, with
their inflated salaries. But it looks different to the working
people, especially the lower paid. It means worry, grief, suffering
and anxiety to them and their families. Fear of unemployment, how to
pay the hire purchase, where to live for the newly-married and so on.
The workers are always ready to sacrifice if they can see real
benefit to themselves, their workmates and families in the future.
They understand there is something wrong or they would not have voted
for Labour to change things. Now they are to be rewarded with the
scourge of Tory policies. Gunter was howled down by the car workers
in Wolverhampton. The workers in the car industry in the Midlands are
demanding work-sharing rather than have their mates suffer on the
dole. They have union consciousness and collective solidarity. “No
sackings” is a correct demand. Share the work—as the T&GWU,
and even the reactionary-led AEU, have been demanding! That is the
first instinctive reaction of the workers. But why stop there? This
is a capitalist crisis. Let them bear the burden. Especially the car
industry has made colossal profits. Let them pay! If the working week
is to be reduced there must be a ban on overtime and full pay for the
whole week! If the capitalist system cannot afford a decent standard
of living for its workers, then to hell with the capitalist system!

How to get
£15 minimum

25
left-wing Labour MPs including Cousins and Michael Foot have
introduced a resolution about which one of their spokesmen,
Mendelson, said, “We hope that as a result of urging and discussion
the government will decide to take fresh measures to encourage
investment and to arrest the dangerous trend towards high
unemployment. Action must be taken now.” Saints alive! They are
asking a tame cow to eat red meat. Wilson echoes the arguments of the
Tories when they were in power and the lefts echo the arguments of
Wilson against the Tories!

Cousins and
Foot have also demanded a national minimum wage of £15 a week and
that is modest enough. But there are millions of workers earning less
than even £10 per week, especially the women workers, among the most
exploited section of the working people. Equal pay for equal work is
always passed unanimously at TUC and Labour Party conferences. It has
become a regular resolution for the last 50 years.

£15
a week and equal pay are modest demands! But the problem is how to
get them. Everyone is for more production and productivity, including
Wilson and the CBI. It is not a question of the wickedness of Wilson
in refusing to carry out the policy on which he was elected, but its
impossibility while the private banks, the
insurance companies and the 380 monopolies dominate the economy and 2
percent of the people possess 80 percent of the wealth of the
country. It is in the interests of these 2 percent that all these
restrictive measures have been taken.

The
Militant says that
only the nationalisation of the above with minimum compensation on
the basis of need with a maximum of £20 a week to any individual
shareholder, can solve the problem. However, Cousins, Foot the other
MPs and the unions opposed to the freeze must not piously declaim
against the measures of the government. What are they going to do
about it? Crossman’s “socialism” is a socialism for bankers and
industrialists. But what are the Labour left going to do when the
government rejects their proposals? Words will not fill empty
pockets, or empty bellies. They will not create jobs.

It
is no use echoing in the same words the arguments of Wilson before
taking power, as Michael Foot did explicitly at the party conference.
This is the argument of economic bedlam. Placed in Wilson’s
position with the same programme, Cousins and Foot would be compelled
to act in the same way by the logic of capitalism. No one can doubt
their sincerity. But sincerity is not enough!

Let
them mobilise the workers in the constituencies and trade union
branches for a campaign to exert pressure on the government. The
government will just shrug off resolutions in Parliament, though
these can and must be a necessary starting point. But the campaign
must be carried to the people. Foot and Cousins must explain how
their policy is different from that of Wilson in the past and why and
how it can be carried out. But first let them get a mass political
campaign under way with meetings, demonstrations and resolutions from
trade union branches and constituencies. Why not get the engineers
and the transport workers to appeal to the rest of the labour
movement nationally and locally to organise a campaign on the
question? Otherwise the resolutions in Parliament are but empty words
and posturing.

In
fact the resolutions are meaningless in themselves and will not budge
the government unless backed by mass action. However, while the
so-called Communist Party is echoing approvingly the resolutions of
the left without suggesting an alternative, the resolutions cannot be
carried out on a capitalist basis as Wilson and Callaghan have
demonstrated in the past two years.

Why
not then campaign for an Enabling Act in the emergency to take over
the monopoly of foreign trade, the banks and insurance companies and
the 380 monopoly giants? This is in Labour’s general programme! No
mandate at the last election? Was there a mandate for a standstill in
production, for a freeze in wages, for cuts in the social services?
“Emergencies” demand emergency action.

Cousins
and Woodcock have come out for more workers’ participation in the
management of nationalised and private industry. Excellent! But again
words are meaningless without action. Let the T&GWU, the
technicians’ unions, and all those opposed to the freeze, work out
a real plan of production to use the tremendous resources of Britain
for the benefit of the people of Britain. The rest of the Unions, the
constituency parties and the shop stewards representatives would
undoubtedly enthusiastically join in such a plan. It would mean lower
hours and higher wages. A £15 minimum wage would be nothing in
comparison to the new opportunities that would open up if the 98
percent of the population who own very little could lay hands on the
wealth-producing resources their labour has created.

No middle way

What
is the alternative? Unemployment and more crisis. British capitalism
is sick. If capitalism remains the malady can only be cured at the
expense of the workers. Events threaten to repeat themselves
ominously. There have been leaks about an attempt to form a “National
Government” as in 1931, at the very onset of the economic crisis.
The present crisis will continue for another two years according to
the capitalist economists, and already the other capitalist countries
are catching the “English sickness.” British capitalism is in a
hopeless position. The capitalists with their hired press and organs
of publicity, the assistance of such demagogues as Crossman, all
things to all men, are, trying to palm off the freeze as “Socialism.”
At a time of real crisis they will try and panic the population as
they did in 1931. The ghost of Macdonaldism stalks again. It is no
use being wise after the event. The Left in the Labour Party must
prepare now for the same inevitable betrayal unless Socialist
policies are adopted. There is no middle way!